Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello everyone!!! I'll tell you guys some of my story!!! it had been years since I had any guitars and I had been itching for a acoustic for quite a while, so... this spring I got a new Taylor 314ce. It's the nicest made acoustic ive owned. ive owned a few cheap ones like ovation, Alvarez, and fender. I hadn't played in years, I heard Taylors was one of the most easy playable ones so that's what I got.

When I first received it from Sweetwater, they run it through what ever test they do and replace strings if needed, etc... looked great but I thought it was a little hard to play. Looking down the neck around 14through 17th fret you could see it looked fairly high. But Ive been playing it anyway and don't really play up that far much anyway. I have been enjoying it and playing it a lot, but I still find it not as easy to play as I thought I would.

I recently purchased a 2nd acoustic, a cheap China made copy of a Martin. The reason I got it was to practice doing things to it before I did them to my Taylor. If I mess up a cheap China guitar not much of a loss is the way Im thinking. When I got the China made guitar a week or two ago I was shocked, it had a straighter neck than my expensive to me Taylor. I called and talked to a Luthier in this state and talked to him and told him how I can lay a straight edge on the neck and it touches at the 14th fret, he said that was fairly common, which shocked me. ive been use to Ibanez, ESP and Charvel electric guitars, and I aint ever seen a neck that bad even on my cheap acoustics.

On the Taylor laying a flat edge on it on the 18th theres around .005 gap, 19th around .008 and the 20th theres around .012. the 14th through the 17th is all about the same maybe .001 or .002 difference as in all basically touching the flat edge.

I got a spacer kit ordered from Taylor. debating if I should take the frets down a little? but Im going to wait until I get the spacers? I thought maybe when I tighten it back up it's possible those hitting the straight edge might change with the spacers or truss adjustment?

my main question is how often have you guys run into a Taylor neck like that and what did you do to make it better?